


In Light of the Common Atrocity

by WDO345



Category: RWBY
Genre: Gen, History Worldbuilding, Mantle, Mistral - Freeform, OCs - Freeform, The Great War, Vale - Freeform, War Journal, War for Freedom and Expression, vacuo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 15:37:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9130789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WDO345/pseuds/WDO345
Summary: In Association with the Mantle Museum of History and Home of Great War Knowledge, this book, provided with notes written by the esteemed Historian Dr Bartholomew Oobleck from Beacon Academy, comes the preserved and documented journals of Lance Corporal Floyd Bersat of the Vale Thirteenth Regiment Regulars and his experience in the Great War in all its entirety.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work inspired by the war journals of the First World War from both the Central Powers and the Allied sides. This is less of an accurate depiction of canon events (as there has yet been any depictions of The Great War) and more of my own personal view of The Great war in the RWBY universe.

    For many the Great War was a tragic state of affairs. It was a rude awakening to the many powers that be to the harsh realities of modern warfare. It revealed not only the dangers of advancing weaponry, but also of ongoing violence attracting harsher concentrations of Grimm onto their borders.

    The Great War was brutal, with millions of young men and women having died for a pointless conflict that could have been avoided. The war changed mindsets, it redeveloped culture and society in the world and created restraining laws to ensure such a tragedy could never happen again.

    Indeed, we live in an unprecedented time of peace and prosperity, but we cannot forget the hardships and the sacrifice the men and women of the war faced in just trying to survive until the next supper call. We should never forget the pain and suffering of these soldiers, many of whom believed they would never see home again.

    Such was the gravity of the war, that many men and women grew fatalistic, and even cynical views of the world; shunning the freedom and choice that were boasted as the entire reason, the just cause, of the entirety of the war. These scarred and damaged souls actively belittled the idea that they fought for, that their friends and their family had died for, due to the extremes they were forced to endure in the Great War.

    Floyd Besart was one such soldier, trained and prepared for war as he was, who became highly cynical and downtrodden following the aftermath of the war, especially following the institutionalization of the Hunter Organizations and schools.

    The journals he wrote during the seven years of warfare is one of the most preserved and well-annotated documents that the Institution of Great War Artifacts, working in tandem with the Mantle Museum of History, had managed to uncover from this timeframe, noted for its tumult revolutionary landscape.

    The journals you are to discover here have been edited and annotated to provide you with the full information that once occupied the mind of this exceptional soldier, and a week by week account of the Great War, in all its brutality, for all to read.

   

 

    IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE MANTLE MUSEUM OF HISTORY, AND THE HOME OF GREAT WAR KNOWLEDGE, AS WELL AS SPECIAL THANKS TO PROFESSOR OZPIN OF BEACON ACADEMY FOR PROVIDING FINANCIAL AND MATERIAL SUPPORT.

    UNDER THE FULL ACCORDANCE OF THE PROPRIETY LAW ESTABLISHED BY THE SCHNEE DUST COMPANY, IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE GREAT HOUSE OF ROYALTY, THIS PIECE IS INTENDED FOR THE SPREAD OF KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION AND DOES NOT SEEK TO GAIN PROFIT OR PROMOTION IN ITS SERIALISATION OF ANOTHER AUTHOR’S WORK.

 

**First Week of the War**

**Sixty-Five Years Ago**

 

    It was the first week of the war and we could not help but feel the thrumming excitement that came with the chance to prove our mettle as soldiers. We trained hard, without rest at times, all for the purpose of defending the Crown of Vale (1) when she needed us most, and there was no other time than now, when all of us were so embroiled in warfare, that Vale would ever call for us.

    My brothers and sisters of the Thirteenth Regiment, General Caux’s (2) First Valean Martial Army, were marching strong under the glare of the sun as we left the walls of Vale under the cheering of spouses, family members, and citizens left behind. In that time I felt the pride of being a soldier fill me in all its entirety, and even more so when the flag of the Thirteenth Regiment was raised high into the sky, the marching call of our boots smashing the Earth like the thunderous roar of the Warriors that came before, made so famous in the stories we share between each other.

    Thus were my thoughts when we left for war. They were good thoughts, meant for the mind of the young. I feel no regret of having those thoughts, only in that they had left me so quickly when news of the wars gravity reached us. In the first day of our travel to Bryngwyn Village, we heard the most disastrous stories of the war.

    Of how the First Atlesian Royal Brigade brutally slaughtered the Third Vacuo Militia Regiment (3). Of how their weapons concentrated such tremendous energy into one pinpoint area, that the aura of the soldiers could not spread the force evenly enough on their bodies; leading to breakage of the bones. Horrific tales of arms and legs healed crookedly or of pulverized bones rendering limbs useless made it to our ears like the snap of quickfire. Our elation sobered quickly.

    The Officers told us not to worry about the words of these messengers, many of which carrying the colours of Vacuo, our allies, but the majority of the Regiment went to sleep with the tales hanging loosely in the back of their minds. They were brutal tales that we had all always expected to have been true to war, as many stories made us believe, and while our confidence in our training and our mettle grew, the first sparks of fear and doubt began to settle into our hearts.

    Our camps during the first week, as we trekked along the King’s Road, were well spaced and supplied, providing us tasteless bread and cooked chunks of meat. They were rations we had long since gotten used to, thus our complaints of the food were ready and easy on our lips. For all the speed that the Officers set in our march, we were well treated, never really exhausted, and fed well.

    Our tents were wide and spacious, perhaps the size of cottages, with steel collapsible mattresses and soft feather filled pillows to keep us comforted in the night. The toiletries were particularly well done, with the Regiment providing the greatest attention there. Perhaps it was the instinct of Valens, but our attention to our cleanliness was none so extravagant as in that week.

    A good soldier, I believe, is one that does not forsake their own hygiene in battle, but instead is exalted for maintaining the highest standard of dress, even while under fire. Or so the training had taught me. But those days were very much like my training, routine and monotonous, with no real danger on our backs.

    It was on the fifth day of the week, after several miles of daily marching, had we arrive to the quaint village of Bryngwyn. It was more a homestead than a village, but it’s position in between the rivers and dense forest made it an ideal place to settle away from the Grimm.

    Unfortunately that provided it the best strategic position for the staging point of an invasion, directed to the inside or the outside. The Thirteenth Regiment was stationed inside the village, tasked with raising the defenses and digging trenches around the village itself.

    The townsfolk were given the opportunity to evacuate, though as frontier villagers go, they were quite the stubborn bunch and refused every offer made by General Caux. They sought to assist us in any way possible, aiming to protect their village, as well as their homeland, from the invaders that would seek to rid us of our freedom of expression.

    As soldiers their display of steadfast loyalty was quite humbling. As I stood in line with my squad, I noticed a woman of bright flame coloured hair tearing at the edges as she witnessed the determination of a pregnant woman to stay and help. Our squad leader, a spry serious fellow of Mistral features, was also threatening to cry. Such was the fire of these villagers that filled our hearts with such passion.

    When the Regiment moved to build our defences, ours was to dig a trench, perhaps half a mile away from the edge of the village, and bordered with chopped wood providing a fence of covering just over the edge of the trench. Steps of earth was built onto the ground, providing elevation for the soldiers, and the men and women of my squad had finished our operation in just an hour’s time. Such was our speed and quality of training.

    Though the work was mild and not one of action, we took to it with the seriousness of trained and well-experienced regulars (4). When our work was done, we felt the good spirits of our work settle on us with pride. Such small work, so inconsequential to the greater scheme of things, to us would represent the culmination of our legend. For it was in the mind of every soldier there, that in some way, some form, we were to become heroes in our own way, and in every effort we placed to our duties, the closer that day of celebration was to come.

    It was with these thoughts that our first brush with our legacy was to come to us. Blanketed by the shadows of the trees, my squad and I had cleared much of the trench when our spotter had called for our attention. There, a hundred off metres from our entrenchment, we spotted a white-cuff (5), watching us from the treeline.

    The man stood stock still, even when knowing we could see him so clearly. We did not fire, for we did not have the clearance to do so. The cold air of the woods clung to our bodies as we watched the white-cuff. A runner had been sent to pass on the message of an enemy spotting but the time of which our orders arrived would be too late.

    When the order to fire returned, the enemy had already disappeared into the treeline, with nobody capable of keeping track of his grey uniform in those woods. Realising that, our squad returned to the safety of our trench, sending the runner back to General Caux with the message of the enemy’s retreat. As we waited for the sun to set, my mind could not help but return to the white-cuff and with which the speed that he had disappeared from our sight, as though he were nothing but a shadow casted by the dying light of day.

    The tragedy of that, is the fact I had yet to realise the ferocity of the battle ahead from this simple information, and that soon, I would face a rude awakening.

 

**Notes: Professor Bartholomew Oobleck**

    The writer of this journal, a one Floyd Bersat, here described the first week of his war. In this we find the information as interesting, as for the case of Floyd, this was, in all technicality, the true first week of the war for him, however, for the rest of the world, the Great War had already been ongoing for the past two weeks. In that, we can see the mindset of the average Vale citizen of the time and also provides us insight on the coverage of the war during this timeframe. Indeed, it was noted that when the First Valean Martial Army first left the walls of Vale, the news coverage of the war, as well as the anti-Mantle propaganda, drastically increased.

    In this first segment we also see the standard of living for the average Vale soldier during the first week, a very large discrepancy than what was known of the accommodations for soldiers later in the war. There is also a brief glimpse as to a Village during this timeframe, when weaponry was less advanced and the costs of building a settlement outside the walls were more expensive. During this time there was a far greater need over natural protection than in the present.

 

 

  * ****During this time the State of Vale was exchangeable with the Crown of the Royal Family. Many times during this time frame people referred to the State as the ‘Crown of Vale.’****


  * **Contrary to popular belief, this is not Garland Coux, the instigator of the Nationalist Party Movement, and later the advocator of the Provisional Council Government that would later be ratified as the main government of Vale, after the Royal family abdicated all powers beyond ceremonial to the Council.**


  * **This was indeed the Battle of Sarband Bridge, the first battle with which revolutionary Commander Keylee Wood would showcase his exemplary battle tactics in defeating the physically superior Vacuo Militia using the terrain and experimental weaponry to demoralise the enemy with the horror of what they were facing, causing many Vauco soldiers to flee out of their own instinct to survive.**


  * **Regulars was a term used to describe professionally trained soldiers who experienced, on average, at least one year of military training before being deployed on the battlefield. These regulars grew increasingly scarce as the war continued.**


  * **White-cuff was a slang term used to describe Atlesian soldiers, primarily in reference to the white-cuffs of their otherwise pure grey uniform.**



 

 


End file.
